Congratulations to Claire Godard-Sebillote and Vasiliki Rahimzadeh who have both been awarded the Vanier Scholarship!
Needless to say this is a major accomplishment for the scholars and for our program, as it highlights both the PhD researcher role as well as the clinician scientist.
Enhancing the capacity of primary care professionals: does it influence health service use in persons with dementia? The Quebec example. By Claire Godard-Sebillote (supervised by Dr. Isabelle Vedel)
Context: Three Canadian consensus conferences on Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders (ADR) recommend that diagnosis, treatment and care of ADR patients should primarily be the responsibility of Primary Health Care (PHC). However, PHC is not fully prepared to deal with these patients, and the care provided is sub-optimal. Indeed, health services caring for the same patient are fragmented, and uncoordinated. This causes ADR patients to extensively use health services. To address this challenge, an Alzheimer plan, aiming at enhancing the capacity of primary care professionals, has been implemented in Family Medicine Groups (FMG) in Quebec . To date, its impact on health service use has not been assessed.
Objective: To assess the impact of Quebec’s Alzheimer plan on health service use by ADR patients.
Anticipated Results: This impact study will provide objective data to support a possible generalization of the plan across Quebec, and thus improve dementia care in Quebec.
Claire will be completing her second year of her PhD this fall.
Evaluating the gap between research ethics review and data sharing in pediatric infrastructure science: a case of big data and little ethics? By Vasiliki Rahimzadeh (supervised by Dr. Gillian Bartlett)
Research in pediatric genomics has increasingly become a data-intensive venture that requires collaboration through data sharing between researchers and institutions. Research ethics review committees can serve as gatekeepers for such collaboration, particularly when the research involves a vulnerable population and spans across institutional, provincial or international borders.ÌýUnderstanding how ethics governance (dis)enables scientific collaboration in pediatric genomicsÌýis therefore critical to accelerating clinical innovation in this field.ÌýThis PhD thesis explores the relationship between research ethics review policy and data sharing practices within the pediatric genomicÌýresearch community in Canada. It therefore fills a knowledge gap at the nexus ofÌýapplied bioethics and Canadian health policy as a result, with broader implications for the future of big data applications in diagnostics and treatments for children that often begin in the primary care clinic, among others.Ìý
Vasiliki will begin her third year of her PhD shortly.
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